


Welcome Home

by Anythingtoasted



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M, Swan Song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-12
Updated: 2012-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-18 12:36:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anythingtoasted/pseuds/Anythingtoasted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was so exhausted after the drive that as he knocked on Lisa’s door he honestly wondered if he was even going to manage not to fall straight into her arms. He held himself back, thankfully – swayed at the doorframe like a soldier home from leave – but in the months after, the way he leaned on her, he might as well have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome Home

He was so exhausted after the drive that as he knocked on Lisa’s door he honestly wondered if he was even going to manage not to fall straight into her arms. He held himself back, thankfully – swayed at the doorframe like a soldier home from leave – but in the months after, the way he leaned on her, he might as well have.

“I’m not going to lie to you.” He sat opposite her at the dining table in her well-lit house, the surface of it smooth but slightly tacky from polish as he clasped his hands on it, staring at them with detached interest. Just a couple of hours ago they’d been stained with blood but now they were clean, uncalloused, smooth as if they’d just been created. He breathed in heavily and lifted his eyes to look at Lisa, who had one hand forward on the table as if to reach for his, but whose eyes were wide and wary. “I’m a mess.” He said, after a moment, and his whole body slumped at the truth. Lisa bridged the gap between them with her hand, slowly; wrapped her slim fingers loosely around his. She said nothing; nodded for him to go on. He drew another shuddering breath. “I think it'd be best if we went slowly.” He finished, and she smiled gently at him; squeezed his hand.

“That’s fine.” She told him, eyes levelled at his, hand holding his gently, as if he was a child. “Take all the time you need. Me and Ben – we’ll be here.”

He was so grateful, so strung-out, so fucking exhausted, that he almost sobbed from relief. He nodded, down at the table, then more surely, at Lisa. “Thankyou.” he murmured, drawing his hand slowly, apologetically, out of her grasp. She nodded at him again, lips turned up in a sympathetic smile, and patted his hand one last time before rising from the table.

“I’ll get a bed made up on the couch - It’s a pull-out.” She held herself still before nodding, to herself rather than to dean, then walked off, leaving him at the table, alone again. He closed his eyes and sat back, tipping his head over the back of the chair – spent; worn out. Weary of everything.

It had been the longest of a succession of long, long days.

Xxx

This kind of suburban quiet was alien to him.

He lay on the couch underneath the copious blankets Lisa had brought him, head leaning against one arm, legs bunched up against the other end, though he could have lain perfectly comfortably if he’d wanted to. Instead, though, sleep was evading him; he wished for something to drink, some place to go, something to focus on instead of the flashes of memory from that afternoon that were slamming themselves repeatedly into him as he stared at the ceiling; but after an hour or so of fighting it, he got up.

He stood quietly in the Braeden’s front room, feeling like a too-big shape amidst all the tiny things that Lisa and Ben had used to construct their home; here there was a TV, the couch, but then also throw-pillows, one of Ben’s toys (some kind of robot; Dean had no idea what it was supposed to be) lying still next to the leg of the coffee table. Everything was cream or yellow, light-coloured. Safe. Even the light that came from the lamp on the table next to the sofa seemed warmer than any light Dean had been in contact with before. He stood as if he was invisible, a ghost or a spirit in this clean, well-loved house. A stranger. The feeling crept over him so acutely that he felt he could physically shake it off; he shrugged his shoulders against it, feeling _stupid,_ then went to the downstairs bathroom, hoping that a shower would calm him down, and that it wouldn’t wake the sleeping people upstairs.

He shrugged his shirt off before he got to the bathroom and wrapped it into a ball in his arms, then closed the door behind him and pulled off his jeans, too, remembering all of a sudden how broken he had been before Castiel fixed him; how his legs had been nothing but splintered bone, his face a mass of red-raw, swollen flesh and bruises. How he’d lost count, in the haze, of how many ribs Lucifer had broken with his sure, unrepentant foot. He looked in the mirror out of pure curiosity; not really wanting to see his face, but rather the state of it. He took a minute to take himself in; how his skin was unmarked, his flesh soft to the touch, all traces of scars and burns now gone. It was like when Castiel first brought him back, two years ago, now; how he had wondered at the endless scars and marks, thirty years of punishment so quickly erased, as if they were never there at all. Everything washed away, leaving him new, unsullied - but for the large red handprint on one shoulder, a shiny, half-healed burn.

Looking at himself in the mirror then, he glanced at his shoulder and felt his stomach plummet into his feet.

The mark – Castiel’s handprint – was gone. Wiped away, like the rest of his well-earned bulletholes and scars, and suddenly he didn’t feel so new anymore.

Castiel wasn’t coming back, then. _“What would you rather have; peace or freedom?”_ his last words to the man he’d saved from hell. And Castiel, apparently, had chosen peace.

Well.

 _Good for him_ , Dean thought bitterly, touching experimentally the now-clear flesh of his shoulder, tracing his fingers over where the mark had been. _Good for him._

The weight of all that had happened that day - the pain, Castiel leaving him alone, Bobby dying for the briefest second, _Sam -_ broke over him like a wave as he touched that bare shoulder. His last surviving link to himself; all that he'd gained through years of blood and sweat and sacrifice, wiped off as if it was nothing. He was _tabula rasa,_ empty, a vessel. More, now, than he ever had been before. The house was so quiet he could hear the gentle, steady drip of a tap; the way the air was hesitant, waiting for morning, when all these small, unremarkable people would rise from their beds and go to work or make breakfast or shuffle their children off to school. And now, Dean was one of them.

He looked at himself in the mirror and hardly recognised who looked back. He thought maybe he'd have been better off keeping his injuries, his caved-in face, his punctured lungs. Maybe he'd have been better on the ground, praying.

" _Cas."_ he said quietly to the mirror, the word on his lips already unfamiliar. "Cas, what have you done to me?" He asked, never expecting an answer but somehow angrier when he didn't recieve one. "Castiel?" he said, louder, in case the angel hadn't heard - but he always heard. It was just that he wasn't listening anymore. "Castiel, you son of a bitch. Tell me-" but what would he say?

_Put me in the ground, Castiel. Put me back. Unmake me, Castiel, I know that you can. I don't want to be fixed, I don't want to be whole, I don't want to be normal. Put me in the cage, put me back down. I can take it, if I'm with my brother. I can take it, if I am myself._

But the last echoes of his words died out, and still no answer came; no flutter of wings, no hand pushing him down, down, to where he'd come from. Where he belonged. He turned on the tap and let the water run; splashed it on his face to stop him shaking, though it did no good. He thought of Sammy and thought of his face twisted cruel; how like him and yet _nothing_ like him Lucifer had been. He stared at his whole, perfect shoulder, and wished that Castiel had never come back to that field.  


End file.
